A Haunting In Muddy Creek

    Lorinda Williams didn't dare do anything but obey her husband. Even though he worked hard and managed to do more than scratch a living from the rocky soil of Appalachia, Jesse Williams succumbed every evening to the temptation of corn liquor. Endless toil and a dozen pains from broken bones and pulled muscles made the clear liquid necessary for a night's sleep. After only a few cups Jesse always passed out, but never soon enough.

    For a short time between lucidity and sleep Farmer Williams lost his mind. The mountain dew affected countless men the same way. Many, mostly women, considered the corn squeezin' a curse. Lorinda saw it as her doom for every evening Jesse turned mean. Real mean.

    Most often hot coffee, a good meal, or a fresh baked pie could calm him. Sometimes he demanded the marital attentions of his wife either lovingly drunk or more brutishly. On occasion Jesse Williams lost his mind completely and whooped and hollered like a 'wild Indian.' Lorinda feared those few nights where the corn turned her husband  into a monster.

    Every morning the good wife rose before the sun and prepared a full breakfast. Their hard work  allowed them to eat well with hot coffee, eggs, bacon, ham, sausage, fried apples, and fresh biscuits with spicy gravy on the table each morning. Lorinda always served her husband before sitting herself.

    Sometimes Jesse saw a bruised arm as she poured his coffee. Maybe he heard her distressed shuffle from a twisted ankle. Usually in his half drunken state Jesse never noticed anything till he looked up from his cup of coffe to say good morning to the wife he loved more than anything else ever. A split lip or poached eye would bring him to tears, then to his knees in apology.

    A hundred times over the years Lorinda had begged her husband to quit. A dozen times he'd tried. The pain and something deep inside him always brought him back to the 'corn.' She quit pleading as the subject made him meaner if drinking or despondent if not. Instead Lorinda abided her man's weakness.

    She did not stay out of fear or because she had no place to go. A dozen brothers and sisters would welcome her with open arms. Several tried to lure her away. She always refused because of the moments they never saw, the countless little gifts of love he gave her. Lorinda stayed and wondered if it would ever change.

   On a particularly cold spring morning Jesse heard a knock on the door of their well built frame farmhouse. He pulled himself up from a meal of biscuits and fried apples and found himself looking at his sister-in-law Lucinda peering inside the small window in the store bought front door.

    Lucinda explained that she'd walked the thirty miles to come visit her sister because of a dream. She'd seen Lorinda lying in her large brass bed with the feather mattress shaking she thought from fever. Jess, a man of few words, explained that she'd missed her sister who'd gone to visit Lucinda just two days earlier. Both laughed at the coincidence. Lucinda questioned why she hadn't passed her sister on the road. Jesse's answered Lorinda had gone by horse and by need had travelled a different path.

   The two agreed that Lucinda would stay three nights and wait for her sister's return. Jess went out into the fields to clear for planting. Lucinda did as any mountain woman would and started dinner. At the noon meal and at supper the two spoke little. Lucinda expected nothing else. When evening came Jess reached for his liquor jar and then pushed it away. He turned to Lucy and offered to show her to her room.

    Lucy filled a ewer of water from the pump in the kitchen and followed Jess up the stairs. He opened the door to a room where she'd often slept. Nothing had changed except for a new home sewn quilt covering the bed and new lace tatted by her sister for the night table.When Jess closed the door she undressed enough to wash. Lucy said her prayers and slipped into the high bed. 

    Lingering in the thoughts that come before sleep Lucinda heard a strange noise, a rustling like a high wind through the dried stalks of harvested corn. She tried to ignore the sound and get the sleep needed for another hard day. The sound continued and was joined by a whisper so soft that the words could not be heard. Curious she threw off the covers and crossed the chilled room to look out a tall and narrow window.

    At first she saw only the barns and the fields. After only a moment she noticed  a soft light like that of the halfmoon reflected off a cloud. The foxfire of a light circled the above the well three times with the rustle and whisper coming with every turn round. After the third circuit the spectre fell into the well. Lucinda stood silent and shaking, only moving away from the window once she knew the light had gone. She said another prayer and waited for sleep. For three nights Lucinda looked out the window at the lights, trying to hear the whispered words.

    On the third morning Lucinda prevailed upon her brother to hitch the horses and take her into town. She pleaded female troubles, a subject certain to draw no complaint from shy and backwards Jess. Once in town Lucinda went alone into the shanty that served as the store. Jesse sat still on the wagon with his head down, not seeing the cold stares from Lucinda and the shopkeeper.

    The ride to and from town wasted most of a day. Lucy chattered on about their relatives, both his and hers. Jess smiled and offered only a few words in answer. Upon returning Lucinda slapped together a quick hot meal of ham, fresh eggs, and morning biscuit. Just before the two retired someone knocked on the door. Jesse found the sheriff on his porch asking for Lucinda.

    He watched his sister-in-law lead the sheriff to the dry well.. With a slow shuffle Jess walked back into the house. Out the kitchen window he saw the sheriff light a kerosene lantern to look down the well. The two visitors then returned to the house and found him sitting with his head in his hands.

    "Well Jesse, your sister here is makin' some pretty strong accusations." the sheriff notified his old friend.

    The three stayed silent for a long while till the sheriff asked "What do you have to say?"

    As Jesse Williams looked up his vistors saw eyes filled with self hatred and loathing, red eyes filled with tears of a man whose life was null.

   "I'm so sorry Lucinda. I woke up drunk one morning and found her and I was fixin' to join her in the well when you knocked on the door."   

The People's Republic Of America

     Expecting another Teaparty rant about Obama being a socialist, Muslim terrorist trying to establish Sharia Law in a Commie America? Well, somehow exactly the OPPOSITE is happening today in America's drift towards becoming the Peoples Republic of America. The dimwitted/ Fox News viewing/ Glen Beck worshipping idiots have it so totally wrong that it would be hilarious if it were not so dangerously tragic. America is being sold out by a small band of elitist conspirators whose goal is to turn the USA into a copy of an existing "peoples republic." What the wingnutz have wrong is their model expecting a Soviet/ North Korean peoples republic and who the traitors really are.

    Anyone who has paid attention over the last thirty years will recognize the increased momentum in the deconstruction of the America we once knew, the America with a very specific social contract that worked for generations. In that America we worshipped the success of others as our ideal. EVERY American had the opportunity to become fabulously wealthy through hard work and invention. Since not ALL of us could become the next Warren Buffett or Sam Walton, we agreed that the rest of us would be fairly rewarded for our own hard work and industriousness. As Americans, we would all sail in the same boat, floating or sinking together. Today though that idealistic notion has been hammered into the ground by a ceaseless campaign of propaganda and derision by a tiny elite intent on garnering all wealth and power unto themselves. The other 99% of us are to be left as politically disenfranchised drones who have no stake in a better America to leave to our children. Instead we are faced with a conspiracy to turn us into Red China. Here's how:

    A Republican spokesman explained the following for us simpletons on a television show the other day. It doesn't matter which spokesman or which show. You've all heard the same thing repeated endlessly for the past decade. His spiel went just like this:

    Corporations have a trillion $$$ sitting offshore that they could (but won't) invest in the US economy to create jobs . If they invested that money in America the jobless rate would drop from 9.5% to about 5.5%. They won't invest here because capital ALWAYS goes to where the greatest profits  can be earned. Right now that place is China, therefore we must become more "business friendly" LIKE THE CHINESE in order to attract that capital for investment here.

    I was surprised to hear an actual Republican put all the pieces together so succinctly. Usually we only get little bits of their true agenda doled out to us at a time, because the Republicans (and their masters) realize that even the most lunatic Fox viewing wingnut might actually fire up a few brain cells and think for themselves. Even they might realize the obvious, but unspoken truth behind the program so cleverly hidden and agilely promoted  by the Wall Streeters and their wholy owned Republican Party ( plus the half of the Democrats who sold out as well).

    AMERICA MUST become like Red China if we are to attracted capital in the future they have planned for us. This is the clear and undeniable message the spokesman made obvious to all except the most thick headed apologist. So what specifically must we do to become more "business friendly " - like China - to attract the capital?

1) We must get rid of all those pesky gumment roadblocks to $$$PROFIT$$$. The horribly anti-business EPA must not be allowed to keep those wonderful, job creating corporations from dumping toxic wastes into our water, soil, and air because we must compete with the most filthy environment the world has ever seen (CHINA)! While the USA demands air scrubbers on coal fired electric generating plants, the Chines have a better idea; build a new plant every week and just throw all the crap into the air like America in the 1930s. Let factories dump any horrid effluent into our rivers, causing death and devastation downstream, just like America before that socialist Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air and Water Act into law in 1970! Anything else is anti-business and we MUST attract that capital by "free market" means. Anything else is SOCIALISM. So we must become more like a one party communist state in order to NOT become socialist.

    The same  holds true for those anti-business regulators who demand that massive egg factories voluntarily follow lax cleanliless standards so as not to spread samonella throughout our nation ( as happened TWICE last year). We must become MORE like Red China and get rid of even the most lenient of consumer protections, access to civil courts to redress grievances, and any other protections because otherwise businesses would prefer to invest in that capitalist/free market paradise called Red China ( where no such protections exist).

2) Workers expect too damned much in America. To attract business capital we must chuck all those "socialist" ideas like health insurance, unions/ collective bargaining, job site safety, and such because not to do so would cause American businesses to invest in a communist country where such safeguards do not interfere with $profit$. We must force workers to accept the simple notion that they are expendible drones without ANY right to any protection, just like the one party, police state they prefer to invest in.

3) Government doesn't exist for the betterment of society as a whole. That is hardly "business friendly". Instead we should be more like the very pro-business Red Chinese. Health care, collective retirement programs, education and such are ALL the responsibility of (extremely low paid) individuals in that workers paradise and America must become more like them in order to attract private (American) capital. Wages must be artificailly held down with government help. Anything else is anti-business and "socialist". It takes between four to six Chinese workers to produce what the average American worker creates in added wealth. The ideal is to have the most productive workers in the world ( yup, that's us folks) work for Chinese wages. We MUST become Red China or expect business to invest there rather than here.

4) The rich shouldn't be expected to contribute. Instead they should be rewarded for "creating" low paying jobs. Tax the rich? Not in China! Instead they should be exalted and handed all power to decide the fate of the nation and its citizens since they are obviously the only people who count. We should become more like them in order to attract that first $trillion$ and the trillions of $$$ that follow.

5) Screw all those silly notions about a market based economy where everyone competes evenly for resources. In China exporters pay 1/2 the price for raw materials and consumers pay double to defer the cost. In China tariffs and taxes artificailly raise the prices of products to insure profits for the corporations. How else are we gonna create jobs without Chinese style subsidies and credits? We MUST become more like the Red Chinese with a pro-business, planned economy in order to compete for our own investment $$$.

    Five  categories are enough to give you the idea. You all are being sold a bill of goods and have swallowed it for decades. THINK! How many times have you heard the conspiratorial agenda sold as the ONLY way, but never so wonderfully complete as that one Republican put it? Remember, we have a $trillion$ in American corporate capital just sitting and unless we become more "business friendly" like Communist China we will all lose out. That is the great lie we are forced to accept as truth.

    In reality the truth is quite different. Other futures, other economic models that bring prosperity to a greater number exist. You will not hear about those extremely plausible and workable alternatives. Why? Because a very small group of conspiratorial elitists are becoming immensely wealthy as the rest of us see our standard of living decline despite working harder than ever. You are given no alternative except to expect what they have planned for us: The People's Republic of America based upon the very lovely, "pro-business" model already attracting our capital to Communist China.

   So the next time you hear a politician broiling about how programs and policies that have worked for generations are now suddenly anti-business, anti-American, and "socialist" and must be destroyed REMEMBER it fits into their plan. The plan ISN'T for a free market and capitalist dreamworld as they pretend, but for a managed, pro-business police state like Red China.

    Or we could actually DEMAND that the sell out Congress and president actually proceed with a different agenda that benefits the vast majority of Americans. We must stand up against turning America into an anti-freedom, monopolistic, corporatist state where the vast majority of us are doomed to life as serfs serving the monolithic profit machine that exists only to enhance the wealth of the already fabulously wealthy.

  An alternative to the People's Republic hell they have planned for us is pretty simple if you open your eyes. All we need do is elect a government that actually looks out for America and Americans AND a true free market system. Slap a tariff on goods imported from a one-party state that subsidizes exports and refuses to allow our products into their market. Set the tariff high enough so that subsidized paper (for one example) from China doesn't kill the free market American paper industry, and no other industry is smashed by a planned economy set to destroy ours to build theirs. Demand policies which promote trade that truly benefits BOTH nations instead of creating a befouled cesspool of a China and an American wasteland, Let's create a future for all of us, including even the Chinese people instead of continuing insane policies which benefit only the tiniest minorities in both nations...